I'm gonna go with Sarah Connor in this debate.I think she is the most badass (even though this argument is titled "best", it quickly became "badass", so ok) because she has to live with the fact that judgement day is going to happen whether she wants to or not, and has to prevent her son from being killed by robots from the future. I don't want to incite another argument, but I think the terminators are much more deadly than aliens, especially the one in T3. His argument that Sarah had to do a lot more to become this badass woman, is also really good. Ripely is around military guys so much that I think her ascent to badassery is not as impressive as Sarah's. Sarah literally goes from being a waitress to this super awesome amazon, saturating herself in as much combat experience as possible (for herself AND for her son, John).

Until a movie is made about "SOULLESS", my vote goes to Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow.I just watched it and I'm biased; still I rarely seen someone poison a brain with her words that way. In a vinyl suit.

Huh, didn't expect Kyle to do Dan's arguing for him. What's NOT badass about shooting a man in front of his kids? That's straight up gangsta.

Also points for the fact that sarah Connor at least had a reason to carry around her designated load: Eddie Furlong, retarded as he may have been, was not only her son but eventually supposed to save the future after he stopped being a complete failure. Newt was just this thing Ripley found and decided to keep. Rational behavior is badass.

Also, this is the second week they've been drinking like they're afraid of water. Probably trying to let the other person get more "final word" in, but wasn't that the point? To try to not let them make more points then you?

Stabby Joe:Love both franchises and the female leads is one of the reasons that makes them "compelling". Plus I do agree about the issue at the moment with ice queens as the protagonists.

Also milk robots!

A lot of the 'ice queen' idea comes from what I'm gonna call the Michelle Rodriguez Problem. She states that she turned down roles playing the love interest, the captured princess, etc. until she defaulted to female badass. While she does a good job at that, I think that most actresses aren't willing to be typecast as that sort of action hero, so they take roles that avoid the stereotype of "willowy female who also carries big guns, curses, and is guaranteed to die before the movie ends, possibly saving the life of the female love interest", which leads to the new stereotype of the detached ice queen.

For once the two contenders are actually ones that I can't easily pick between. Both of them are good characters with similar backgrounds. Sarah starts out as a nobody who gets thrust into the position of being one of the key people to be able to stop the coming robot apocalypse, and Ripely starts out as a nobody who's thrust into the center of a conspiracy to harness the deadliest lifeform mankind has ever encountered.

Really I would have been happy with a tie between these two. But considering that I'm much more of an Aliens fan than I am a Terminator fan, I gotta go with Ripely.

That and lets face it, Aliens (the 2nd movie) was infinitely better than T2. Though admittedly, it's not because of Ripely.

It's because of the greatest Sci-Fi character of all time: Private 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

Connor for the NRA choices, especially when you consider SCC. In terms of visual entertainment, Aeryn Sun is probably the best. In terms of written sci-fi the amount of good choices are entirely too numerous.

You know what? This debate between Ripley and Sarah Connor has been going on for a while now, and to be honest, I'm pretty sick of it by this point. I mean, they're both important characters in the history of how women are portrayed in mainstream cinema, but the way in which both these women are held up as the pinnacle of feminist film-making winds me up no end.

I mean, if you look at the implications of both these characters, what are they? That in order for a woman to be badass, she has to be a maternal figure.

Seriously, look at both those franchises. The reason both Ripley and Connor became iconic figures is because they're both women who end up sweating spinal fluid in order to protect their offspring/adopted offspring. And to be honest, I find that a little demeaning. It's as if a woman can only be badass as long as she still conforms to the gender roles that society tries to place upon her. To be fair, Ripley has a few other films where she subverts this a bit, but it's the iconography from Aliens for which she's remembered, and it's iconography which is centred around the idea of the action-mother.

Here's the thing: we don't demand that all our action heroes take on patriarchal roles. Sure, they exist. I watched Babylon AD a little while ago, where Vin Diesel ends up taking rockets to the face in order to protect a young girl. But that's just one kind of action hero. We also have plenty of other archetypes as well:

The brooding widower- Braveheart, the Crow, Lethal WeaponThe nameless stranger- the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon A Time In The WestThe cocky rogue- Han Solo from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, John Maclane in Die HardThe antihero- George Clooney in From Dusk Till Dawn, Riddick from Pitch Black

...to name a few. In short, men in action films can have whatever motivations they want, and we'll go along with them as long as they're well written and engaging to watch. Yet for female characters, maternal instincts are seen as some high-bar of writing, as if basing a character's entire life and risking their own death for some little snotbag is the only way people can relate to strong, capable women. Why can't we just have more women in action and science fiction who are self-serving, morally ambiguous human beings interested in their own preservation, rather than martyrs for their own genetic material?

You know who I think's a great subversion of the type of character I'm talking about? The Bride from Kill Bill. She's a mother, and that ends up playing a large part in the end of the story, but for the majority of the two Kill Bill films, the fact that she's a mother is irrelevant. She's portrayed as a highly effective killing machine who's getting vengeance on the douchebags who ruined her life. And it's great. She kicks ass not because she's a mother with some damned offspring to protect, but simply because she's highly trained in the art of kicking ass.

I believe he said "like Katniss", referring to the protagonist of The Hunger Games. Which would definitely explain the later comment to "GET OUT!" (Yeah...I think Hunger Games is really getting overexposed by now...)

DustyDrB:What did Chris say at the end?Aside from no mention of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I'm with Dan. From 80's hair to crazypants to inspiring badass. I like that character arch.

This lovely lady who was really well casted, but was in an unfortunately bad movie based on a good book:

captcha: once upon a timeFitting.

Aww I love the Hunger Games in all it's forms. (Except for the cruddy twilighting of the romance subplot in the film) but I reckon Katniss is a pretty kickass female protagonist. I don't know much about Sarah Connor, but Ripleys... too out there by the end of it, even in the beginning her personalities kinda flat. She likes cats, is terrified of aliens but still willing to see things through with sheer deterimination. It's good, but when you compare to all the motivations and machinations of Katniss, Katniss feels more real. And she also feels like her arc is more tight (mainly because the Alien franchise is a bit tone schizophrenic and was definitely getting a bit ragged by the end).

Ripley is amazing, but I think we know more about Katniss and she has more to say, plus the psychological tortute that gets piled on her by the end...

Kyle forgot to mention that not only did she sacrifice herself and DIE in order to ensure the queen never made it into Weyland/Yutani's hands... she freaking came back from the dead to do it all again! Against her will... but that's not the point.